


Color Schemes

by spacegaysgettingspacelaid



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (sort of), Crack Treated Seriously, Klance Week 2016: Red/Blue, M/M, Why Did I Write This?, also allura absolutely chooses paladins based on color schemes thats literally the whole plot, au where the yellow lion was the one found near the garrison, but im so laTE, everyone on the team is a shipper with zero self control, her color scheming skills need work tbh, i wasnt a shipper when klance week was happening ok i am ashamed pls dont hate me, klance, pidge uses he/him for most of the fic, she thinks keith gets the blue lion and lance gets the red lion tho, yeah so blue did not come first
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 18:47:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8113387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegaysgettingspacelaid/pseuds/spacegaysgettingspacelaid
Summary: "… Maybe Lance is the Red Paladin," Allura says unsurely. Coran strokes his mustache in thought."What?" Keith asks, eyes wide. "Uh-""Definitely," Coran confirms."In that case: Keith, you will go with Hunk to find the Blue lion. Lance, you will wait here until we receive further information about the Red lion's whereabouts.""Better than nothin'," Lance grumbles.
☼☼☼
in which allura assigns the paladins their lions incorrectly.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i am on a rOLL
> 
> (meaning im wasting my life being trash)

"Color schemes," Lance says decisively. "I get blue."

"But your jacket is green," Keith points out, crossing his arms. _"I_ think you just want the bigger lion."

"Well, it's not like _you_ could handle that blue guy. The red one's tinier. You should take it."

"It does go with your jacket," Hunk mutters considerately.

"Paladins, please," Allura begs, glaring at each boy in turn. "Which one of you is more impulsive?"

"Not me! I am a responsible young man. Please grant me the best lion," Lance says. Then he winks, as nearly everyone expected him to despite some knowing him for so short a time. "I can take you for a spin sometime, you know… if you want."

Princess Allura chooses to ignore this. "Keith? Would you describe yourself as impulsive, brave?"

"I guess so," Keith replies, shrugging slightly.

"Then you will pilot the Red lion."

"Haha, told you!" Lance laughs, and Keith sighs.

Allura frowns. "Perhaps I have it wrong. Lance does not seem like he… _possesses the qualities_ of the Blue Paladin."

"Maybe we got the wrong guy," Keith says, smirking and trying not to look at Lance, who is currently gaping. Hunk whispers that he ought to close his mouth before he catches space flies. Lance complies.

"Woah, hold up!" Lance shouts, standing rigidly straight. "Are you saying I don't even _get_ a lion!? I am a _fantastic_ pilot, thank you very much! I think I can handle that Blue lion very well!" Hunk tries to calm him down, and Lance shakes his head. "Dude, no! I am, like, ten seconds away from finding the Blue lion myself and breaking into it just to show these chumps what an awesome flier I am."

"… Maybe _Lance_ is the Red Paladin," Allura says unsurely. Coran strokes his mustache in thought.

"What?" Keith asks, eyes wide. "Uh-"

"Definitely," Coran confirms, nodding sharply, and Allura smiles and clasps her hands together excitedly.

"In that case: Keith, you will go with Hunk to find the Blue lion. Lance, you will wait here until we receive further information about the Red lion's whereabouts."

"Better than nothin'," Lance grumbles, crossing his arms and watching bitterly as Pidge and Shiro prepare to find Pidge's lion and Keith and Hunk head off to the Yellow lion. Hunk waves kindly, and Keith copies the motion with an annoying smirk.

Before they can leave, Coran stops them all. "Allura?" he asks, sounding concerned. "Something the matter?"

Allura bites her lip, thinking hard.

"Yes. Make Lance and Keith switch jackets."

"No," says Keith.

"What," says Lance.

"The color schemes," Allura whispers.

When the boys just stare at her suspiciously, Coran pipes in with, "It is an ancient Altean custom!"

The boys buy it, and Keith walks out with a jacket that isn't even blue.

Allura eventually tires of hearing nothing but terrible pick-up lines, and Lance is shocked to find himself drop-kicked into the wall.

☼☼☼

"Okay, uh- there are bad guys here," Hunk announces, wincing at the sight of all the black and purple ships around their destination planet.

"Okay, uh- what's the problem?" Keith huffs, mimicking the Yellow Paladin's tone.

"Um, the _problem_ is that we're going to be lasered into a oblivion. Do you want that, Keith? Because I don't. I want to live to eat another nacho."

"Whatever. Just dive in."

Hunk pouts a little. "If Lance were here, he would have said 'I guess today is just nacho lucky day.'"

"What? I don't get it."

"Okay, I'm diving," Hunk grumbles, pushing forward the controls in his lion. Keith nods and jumps out of the Yellow lion's mouth before it even has time to touch the ground, and Hunk nearly has a heart attack. But then Keith is running full speed to the mining elevator, making his way down(town, but he wouldn't understand that reference), and Hunk is busying himself with Galra battleships.

☼☼☼

"Do you think Hunk is okay?" Lance asks, having recovered from the drop-kick. He worries that Keith will get his best friend killed.

"I have full confidence that they will arrive back at the castle mildly alive," Allura assures him.

☼☼☼

"Is there any way that you could maybe be faster," Hunk pleads, ramming his lion into a Galra ship and groaning when another emerges in its place.

"Just be patient," Keith mumbles, tracing his hands along the scribbles on the wall. Nothing happens. It doesn't take long for Keith to get impatient himself and slam his fist against the rock wall. Surprisingly, that doesn't work either, and Keith groans and turns around, sliding his back down the wall as he falls into a sitting position. Lance's jacket rides up around him.

The wall gives way, and Keith falls down a terrible slip and slide that he did not want to experience.

Regardless, now he's standing in front of a giant, magical, sentient blue robot lion. Except it's got a blue particle barrier around it, similar to Hunk's lion's yellow one from when they first found it. Keith squints at the lion, but, rather disappointingly, it does not respond.

"Hey," Keith says awkwardly, waving a hand at the beast.

It still doesn't reply. Keith wonders why he thought it would.

"So. How's… life?"

Silence.

Keith slams his hands against the particle barrier. "Come on! How am I supposed to know what to do? Do I have to bond with you or something!? I don't know how to do that!"

Childishly, Keith slaps the barrier with his sweater paws from Lance's jacket.

The lion opens up, and Keith makes sure to squint at it extra hard as he walks inside.

☼☼☼

Allura pinpoints the Red lion's location, and the blue, green, and yellow lions blast into action.

"Lance, go! Find your lion, activate it, and get out of here!" Shiro commands, and then he and Pidge dart off in the opposite direction, distracting guards and freeing prisoners.

Meanwhile, Lance is lost.

"Keith! Left or right!" Lance yells into his comm.

"What!? I don't know, left!" Keith replies. Lance goes right. "What the hell is wrong with this lion? It won't let me dive right!"

"Maybe it thinks you're being stupid," Lance snorts, backtracking to go left (right was the wrong choice. Thanks a lot, Keith).

_"I_ think _it's_ being stupid!"

"Hey, I think my lion knows what to do!" Hunk shouts, and Lance thinks he should probably evacuate the ship, like, _now._

"What the hell!" Keith fumes. "Mine hasn't said a word, how do you understand yours!?"

"They're not really _words,_ exactly," Hunk replies. "Lance, Shiro, Pidge - are you guys clear? Because everyone in the general vicinity is pretty angry at us. Preeeetty sure they know me and Keith were a distraction."

"Just give me a second!" Lance says, furrowing his eyebrows in frustration. Shouldn't he be able to, like, _feel_ the lion, or whatever? Because if that's the case, his lion is totally broken. "Where _is_ this thing?"

"Did you turn left like I told you?" Keith asks, tone sitting on the line between irritation and anger.

_"Yes!"_ Lance says, not including the part of the story where he went right first. "It hasn't exactly gotten me anywhere!"

"Well, turn left _again!"_

"That'll take me in a circle!"

"No, you moron! Left, left, right, best way to solve a maze!"

"What, do you sit in your shack every Sunday morning with a kiddykomics maze game?"

_"Just do it, Lance!"_

"Yesterday, you said tomorrow," Lance mutters to himself, going left again and then right. He stumbles into a big, open room and gapes at the Red lion planted in the middle of it. "Holy crow."

"What did I tell you?" Keith asks, exasperated.

Lance doesn't hear him. He thinks the lion is amazing (but not as amazing as the Blue lion. Lance figures he'll have to get used to being stuck with tiny Red). "How do I open it?" Lance asks.

"I slapped mine," Keith says bluntly.

"That should not have worked," says Allura.

"Just hurry it up!" Shiro barks.

"Okay, okay, sheesh," Lance mumbles, poking the Red lion's particle barrier. "Heeeeey. Open up."

Nothing happens.

"Knock knock!" Lance says. He leans to his left a little and says "who's there?" in a deep voice. Keith snorts over the comms. "Lance! Lance who? Lance for _you!"_

Silence. Except Keith is two seconds away from full out guffawing.

"Oh, shut up!" Lance huffs, glad the others can't see his blush. "I bet you did some weird things trying to get yours open-"

The doors to the room fly open. There are guards everywhere. Lance is suddenly aware that knock knock jokes will not work.

"Please, I'm desperate," Lance whines, throwing his arms around a small bit of the barrier in a messy one-way hug.

"Are you humping the barrier?" Pidge asks.

_"Pidge!"_ Shiro scolds him.

Lance lets out a moan that does not help his situation, and then he turns around and starts throwing nearby items at the Galra as best as he can. "Look, bro, I get that you're the quiet type. Not real into jokes? Yeah, man, I get that!" Lance says amiably, glancing back at the Red lion every so often. "But I'm your paladin. And there are things shooting at me. You gotta open up."

The Red lion doesn't.

Lance will admit to panicking slightly as he slowly begins inching around the barrier, behind the Red lion to use it as a shield from the Galra. He shoves some throwing material into the pockets of Keith's jacket and then scrambles along the odd architecture in the back of the room and ends up pretty high up, and then he jumps off the wall and lands on top of the Red lion's particle barrier. Then he pauses to praise himself for both a) getting the high ground and b) becoming a world-famous parkour champion (kind of).

Lance rips his helmet off his head and sets it down on the particle barrier so he can see better. "How am I supposed to handle all these guards!?" Lance yells, pitching items like the baseball player he never was (and still isn't). "My bayard is still fricking broken!"

"Just jump right in and start punching," Keith suggests, and his voice echoes over the comms and off the Red lion's particle barrier.

The particle barrier disappears, and Lance falls on top of the Red lion.

"Report!" Shiro demands, and Lance can hear gunshots through the comms _and_ right in front of him as he scrambles off the Red lion and into the thing's mouth. The lion shuts its mouth right after Lance is safely inside, and Lance plops down in front of the dashboard and cracks his knuckles.

"I got it," Lance says, smirking and resolving not to tell anyone that he has no clue how he did it.

"Great, now _get out of there!"_ Shiro commands, and Lance guides the lion forward but it goes too fast, too jerkily, like it expected to be driven right into the Galra soldiers. The awkward movement leaves the lion's front paw landing harshly on a techy podium in the middle of the room, and Lance shouts when the floor gives out.

"This lion is total crap at following directions!" Lance screams as he tries to regain control, and the Red lion brakes to a stop just to spite Lance.

Moments later, the Green lion blasts away, off the Galra ship, and Hunk does the thing he was talking about earlier and the Galra ship ends up pretty out of order.

Lance and Keith nearly crash their lions instead of landing them, but Allura only gets _kind of_ mad.

☼☼☼

"Ah, Princess-" Coran starts.

"The lions will sort out what's right and what's wrong," Allura says, but she's worried, too.

☼☼☼

"Can I have my jacket back yet?" Lance asks.

Keith sniffs and then takes it off. "It still smells like you."

"Um. _Thanks?"_ Lance asks, raising his eyebrows. Keith shrugs, and Lance shakes his head and hands Keith his own jacket.

"Of course," Allura mutters, inadvertently gaining the paladins' attention. _"Color schemes."_

"What?" Lance asks, but Allura just smiles and shakes her head.

"I was just… wanting to congratulate you all. All five of you did an impressive job retrieving the Red lion," she covers.

Shiro smiles softly. "Our pleasure, Princess."

"We make such a good team," Hunk sniffs, hugging the two nearest people (Lance and Keith). Lance is pleased. Keith is not.

"Morons," Pidge mutters under his breath. Lance turns his head to shoot him a glare-

Sirens deafen Lance, who suddenly regrets not taking ASL in high school. He already _knew_ Spanish, dang it. _Now_ what will he do? Learn to read lips? Lance thinks he couldn't _bear_ to stare at _Keith's_ stupid mouth.

"Hey, _wake up,_ moron!" Keith shouts, snapping his fingers in front of Lance's face, and Lance jumps out of his seat and pretends to be not-thankful as he runs to get into his lion. He almost tries to enter the Blue lion (because Allura is right, color schemes are _everything!_ Maybe he should have let Keith keep his jacket), but he catches himself and ends up in Red.

"What _took_ you so long?" Shiro asks through gritted teeth, and Lance chuckles nervously as he and Keith fly out of the hangars.

The Galra are everywhere, but the most pressing matter seems to be the gigantic ship with what Allura is calling an "ion cannon." Apparently it can-

Lance's eyes go wide when it fires at the castle, which (thank the stars) has a particle barrier of its own.

"Ooookay, so we should probably stop this thing!" Lance shouts, knuckles going white with how hard he's gripping the controls on his lion.

"You have to form Voltron!" Allura shouts over the comms.

"How!?" Lance asks.

" _You'll know!"_ she replies, which is not as helpful as she probably believes it is.

"Get close! Fly at the main ship!" Shiro says, and all five paladins draw up close to one another, aiming straight for the ship, and suddenly there's this _feeling_ , and most of them are _shouting_ with their determination to win this thing, and then-

It doesn't work.

"Nothing happened!" Hunk says, tone disappointed and very, very worried.

"What now!?" Pidge asks frantically.

There's a Galra ship setting its sights right on Pidge. It fires-

The Red and Blue lions dive in front of the Green one at the same time. Their momentum gets all three of them out of the way, somehow, but Red and Blue still bump heads and then Keith is angrily yelling out "Why did you dive!?" to the Blue lion and Lance is screaming "Why didn't you dive faster like I _told you_ to!?" to the Red and then they're both freezing and looking into each other's eyes on the screens in their lions.

Their lions brake quickly and stop in midair.

"Lance!" Shiro shouts. _"Keith!"_

"What are you-"

The Red and Blue lions open their mouths and their paladins leap out in perfect tandem, easily making the jump between lions and switching places as fluidly as though they'd had it planned all along. Lance skids around a corner and practically falls into the Blue lion's seat, and he can feel the dashboard humming beneath his fingers, and Blue is speaking to him, telling him _yes yes this is right you've got it right _and Keith is sprinting to the Red lion's cockpit and putting his hands on the controls before he even manages to sit down and Red is screaming in his head, screaming _now we'll show them and they won't even know what **hit** them_ and the Red and Blue lion both fly straight up into the air and the other paladins catch on and there's that _feeling_ again and suddenly Lance and Keith are yelling out battle cries, and the others are following suit, and there's this sort of spectrum of light that washes over the five of them as suddenly they are _not_ five they are _one._

What feels like a slow-motion power ranger transformation sequence but in reality probably only lasts a few seconds passes by, and then they've got Voltron, _Voltron_.  The Galra fleet is done for, with one lion hand nomming on the main ship's top and with another firing fricking _lasers_ to handle the little ships, and, distantly, Lance is pretty sure he can hear Hunk yelling something along the lines of "I'm a leg!" and, even more distantly, Lance thinks that such an enthusiastic statement _must_ be helping their power level _somehow._

"Color schemes," Coran says, a little surprised.

Allura smiles.

☼☼☼

It takes a while.

It takes a lot of nudging and whispering and plotting. Entirely by coincidence, Hunk and Pidge learn to be very good at all three of these things. Meanwhile, Allura suggests a "bonding exercise" involving a whole lot of hand-holding, but Coran takes pity on the poor boys and so the handcuffs and food situation happens instead. Shiro tries to be professional about things and respect his fellow paladins' personal space, but in the end he gives Pidge permission to set up a camera in Lance's room.

It doesn't go how they expected it to go, and Pidge ends up scarred for life. It is at this point that Pidge reveals to a very offended Lance that, no, no over-dramatic heterosexual male denial is happening because _actually_ Pidge is just a girl and doesn't want to see Lance unless he has several layers of clothing on.

Lance has a small freak-out. Pidge doesn't think she's ever seen his eyes that wide.

Until, of course, the day when Keith says "Your lion sucks, Lance, b-but-" (and he takes a deep breath here, glances down at his hand to read the notes he has written) "but _you_ don't. Uh, at least- not yet." Keith tries to wink, and it kind of looks like he's having a seizure. But Lance is wooed automatically by such a "smooth" line (Pidge and Hunk thought it up all on their own), and Keith ends up with red lips and red ears and red cheeks and Lance leans back and smirks at all the blushing that's happening while Allura whispers _"the color schemes!"_ and overall Pidge and Hunk consider it a job well done.

After that, Lance and Keith switch jackets a lot.

Sometimes it's because Keith says that Lance's jacket smells like him, and he likes that. Lance thinks the sweater paws look cute on him, anyways.

Sometimes it's because Keith likes the way Lance looks wearing his boyfriend's clothes, and Lance is _oh so happy_ to comply. (Lance asks Keith to teach him some MCR songs just so he can fulfill his newfound "emo style." Keith wonders what MCR is.)

Sometimes it's just because Lance and Keith are an annoying piece of crap and a chuckling emo demon (respectively) and it is just really, _really_ fun to piss Allura off.


End file.
